Chapter 74. Karbala and the Imamate: the Birth of Shi’ism

The Shiat Ali, the “party of Ali”, began as a political faction in the civil wars described in the previous chapter. It became a religious tradition with its own sacred history, its own theory of authority and its own expectation of the end of time. The turning point was the death of Husayn, the Prophet’s grandson, on the plain of Karbala in 680. This chapter sets out the event and its meaning, then the doctrine of the imam’s special knowledge passed down Ali’s line, the split between quietist and revolutionary currents, the succession of imams to the occultation of the twelfth, and the uses of messianic expectation in modern Iranian politics. It closes with a contested question the library’s sources raise repeatedly: whether Shi’ism carried Iranian, Zoroastrian or Mithraic content beneath its Arabic surface. The question is answered in different ways by the Zoroastrian specialist Mary Boyce, the ethnographer Navid Fozi, the journalist Amir Taheri and Mehran Keshe.

Karbala, 10 Muharram 61 AH

When Muawiyah arranged for his son Yazid to succeed him, Armstrong writes, “there was an immediate outcry. In Kufah, loyal Alids called for the rule of Ali’s second son, Husain”. Husayn set out from Medina “with a small band of followers, together with their wives and children”, but the Kufans, “intimidated by the local Umayyad governor”, withdrew their support. “On the plain of Kerbala, just outside Kufah, he and his followers were surrounded by the Umayyad troops and massacred. Husain was the last to die, holding his infant son in his arms” [Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, #53062, “The Umayyads and the Second Fitnah”].

The encyclopaedia dates the battle to 10 October 680 (10 Muharram 61 AH). It names the Umayyad commanders as Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, Umar ibn Sa’d and Shimr ibn Dhi al-Jawshan. It puts Husayn’s force at 70-145 against 4,000-5,000, and his escort at about 70 men when a 1,000-strong Umayyad force intercepted it and forced it to camp at Karbala on 2 October. Ibn Ziyad refused him safe passage unless he submitted, and after the battle the surviving family members were taken prisoner. “The battle was the start of the Second Fitna”, during which the Tawwabin and then Mukhtar al-Thaqafi tried to avenge Husayn [Wikipedia: Battle of Karbala]. Among the dead were Husayn’s half-brother and standard-bearer Abbas ibn Ali, killed “while attempting to obtain water from the Euphrates river for Husayn’s thirsty children and companions” [Wikipedia: Abbas ibn Ali], and Hasan’s son al-Qasim, born in 667 and killed at Karbala “aged 13” [Wikipedia: Al-Qasim ibn Hasan ibn Ali]. Sourdel’s glossary gives the same date and adds that “the caliph Yazid is said to have deplored this death, which he had not ordered and which brought him the contempt of the Shiites”, who have commemorated it ever since “by mourning ceremonies celebrated on 10 Muharram” [Sourdel & Sourdel-Thomine, Civilizatia Islamului clasic III, #12462, entry “AL-HUSAYN”, translated from Romanian].

For Armstrong, Karbala became the Shii paradigm: “Like the murder of Ali, the Kerbala tragedy became a symbol for Shii Muslims of the chronic injustice that seems to pervade human life; it also seemed to show the impossibility of integrating the religious imperative in the harsh world of politics, which seemed murderously antagonistic to it” [Armstrong, #53062]. The encyclopaedia adds that the battle “galvanized the development of the pro-Alid party (Shi’at Ali) into a distinct religious sect with its own rituals and collective memory”. On Ashura, it says, Shias “mourn, hold public processions … beat their chests and in some cases self-flagellate”, while Sunnis “likewise regard the incident as a historical tragedy” [Wikipedia: Battle of Karbala]. The nineteenth-century historian Thomas Keightley called the account of Husayn’s death “one of the most pathetic and best related incidents of Oriental history” [Keightley, Secret Societies of the Middle Ages, #64544, ch. II].

The doctrine of the imamate: ilm and nass

After Karbala, Husayn’s descendants “lived secluded and devout lives in Medina”. Armstrong traces the formation of the doctrine to the fifth imam, Muhammad al-Baqir (d. 735), who developed an esoteric (batin) reading of the Quran. His brother Zayd ibn Ali was a political activist killed in a revolt in 740. “To counter Zayd’s claim to be the imam of his time, al-Baqir argued that the unique ilm of the Prophet was passed down the line of Ali’s immediate descendants. Each one of the imams chose his successor and passed on the esoteric lore … Only the imam who had received this special designation (nass) from his predecessor was the legitimate leader of the Muslims.” Most Shiis at first preferred Zayd’s revolution to al-Baqir’s “mystical quietism”. After the Abbasids suppressed Shii dissent, however, they listened to the sixth imam, Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 765). He held that the designated imam “would not press his claim to the caliphate” but would be a spiritual teacher, and he told his followers to practise taqiyyah (dissimulation) for their safety [Armstrong, #53062, pp. 56-57, 66].

Taheri, writing from inside the Iranian tradition, stresses doctrine over politics. Shiites “have added two principles of their own to the three principles of Islam”: Adl, “the belief that divine justice must be meted out in this world”, and Imamah, government by an imam “who must be ma’asum or chaste in the sense of being totally incapable of committing any sin”. In his view the idea of ‘ismah (sinlessness) “lies at the heart of the doctrinal schism” [Taheri, Holy Terror, #64433, notes to ch. 3].

Keightley’s four sects and the near-caliphate of the Twelvers

Keightley’s nineteenth-century classification, drawn from von Hammer, Mirkhond and Malcolm, divides the Shiites into four sects, “the point of agreement being the assertion of the right of Ali and his descendants to the imamat … the point of difference being the nature of the proof on which his rights are founded, and the order of succession” [Keightley, #64544, ch. II]:

Keightley adds that “the Twelvers were very near obtaining possession of the khalifat”. Caliph al-Ma’mun named “Ali Riza, the eighth imam, to be his successor”, even laying aside the Abbasid black for the green of Ali. The Abbasid family, “which now numbered 30,000 persons”, rose and proclaimed his uncle Ibrahim, “and the opportune death of Ali Riza (by poison, as was said) relieved the son of Haroon Er-Rasheed from embarrassment. Ali Riza was interred at Meshed” [Keightley, #64544, ch. II]. Sourdel states more flatly that al-Rida, “chosen as heir by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun”, “died poisoned at Tus in 818”, and that the city of Mashhad grew up beside his tomb [Sourdel, #12462, entry “ALI AL-RIDA”]. Armstrong is more cautious: “A few months later, al-Rida conveniently died, possibly by foul play” [Armstrong, #53062, p. 63].

Occultation and the expected Mahdi

Sourdel’s entry on the imam notes that “the line of visible imams stopped at a determined date: at the twelfth for some, at the seventh for others” [Sourdel, #12462, entry “IMAM”]. Boyce dates the disappearance of the twelfth imam to 878. He is “the ‘hidden’, or ‘expected’ imam, who will, like the Saoshyant, appear at the end of time, restore the faith, and fill the earth with justice” [Boyce, Zoroastrians, #55117, “Under the Caliphs”]. Armstrong records an earlier form of the belief: the ghulat, often converts who “brought some of their old beliefs into Islam with them”, held that slain leaders were “in temporary ‘occultation'” and would return to bring about “a utopian realm of justice and peace in the Last Days” [Armstrong, #53062, pp. 52-53].

Kim Ghattas explains the political force of the doctrine: “Traditionally in Shiism, the perfect Islamic state can come into existence only with the return of the Mahdi, or Hidden Imam, a messiah-like redeemer and the twelfth imam after Ali”. She describes the crowds of 1979 greeting Khomeini “as though Khomeini were the Mahdi, the Hidden Imam returned from occultation”, his years of exile having been his own “occultation” [Ghattas, Black Wave, #72495, Part I]. Jerome Corsi, writing a hawkish case for Israeli action against Iran, points to Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, “known as ‘the Crocodile'”, as Ahmadinejad’s spiritual adviser. He says Yazdi heads an institute in Qom, “site of the Jamkaran well, from which Shiite believers expect the Twelfth Imam will reappear” [Corsi, Why Israel Can’t Wait, #87960, “Ayatollah Yazdi and the Mahdi”].

Najaf, Karbala and the clergy

Taheri describes Najaf in 1938 as “dominated by the golden dome of the mausoleum of Ali, the fourth Caliph and the first Imam of Shi’ism”. He writes that the city “was said to earn its livelihood in two ways: exporting mullahs and importing corpses”, since its two dozen colleges supplied clergy “throughout the Shiite realms in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and faraway British India”. Pilgrims who prayed at the shrines of Ali and Husayn “would have all their sins forgiven by Allah” [Taheri, #64433, ch. 3 “The Sayyed Who Saw the Light”]. Ghattas calls Najaf “the oldest and most prestigious hawza”, where Khomeini in exile “trained hundreds of clerics” [Ghattas, #72495, Part I].

Was Shi’ism an Iranian vessel? Reported theories and the evidence

Taheri’s reported theory. In an endnote on Hasan-i Sabbah, the founder of the Ismaili Assassins, Taheri writes that Hasan’s view of the Seljuk Turks as aliens “is cited by some historians as an argument for the widespread belief that Hassan was a Persian nationalist and a secret Zoroastrian. This theory even claims that the entire Shi’ite movement was started by Persian nationalists who wished to de-Islamicize Iran while keeping an appearance of Qur’anic belief. Many of Iran’s prehistoric religious beliefs continue to live on not only in mainstream Shi’ism but in the theories and practices of other much smaller sects such as the Alawites … the Druzes … the Ali-Allahis … and the Yazidis”. He reports that the Yazidi leader Emir Muawwyyah, in a 1982 Paris book, To Us Spoke Zarathustra, said his people had been “Zoroastrians ‘in secret'” since the advent of Islam [Taheri, #64433, notes to ch. 3]. Taheri presents this as what “some historians” claim, not as his own finding.

Boyce’s historical account. Boyce gives a more specific mechanism. She calls the princess Shahrbanu, said to have married Husayn and borne the fourth imam, a “wholly fictitious figure, whose name appears to derive from a cult-epithet of Ardvisur Anahid”. Through this legend, she writes, “many Iranian converts espoused the Shi’ite cause”, which let them oppose Umayyad “narrow Arab nationalism” and “uphold the claims of the heirs … of the Sasanian royal house; and so it was no longer the Zoroastrians alone who stood for patriotism”. Under the Abbasids, Islam in Iran “grew steadily more Zoroastrianized”, the imams were credited with “an especial divine grace, like the royal Khvarenah”, and the hidden imam took the place of the Saoshyant [Boyce, #55117, “Under the Caliphs”].

Fozi’s ethnography. Fozi records that Zoroastrians in Tehran told him “Shi’a have preserved Zoroastrian culture”. In the words of their high priest (mobed), Shias still honour light, visit ancestral graves on Thursday nights, use the rosary and pray five times a day: “Iranians did not become Arabs”. Some informants claimed that Zoroastrians protected sacred sites by renaming them imam-zadehs, and one Shia told him that “many treatises attributed to Shi’i Imams belong to Zoroastrians, like Nahjol-Balaqeh”. Fozi also quotes Jonathan Berkey on “the circulation of Iranian religious ideas in Arabia” before Islam [Fozi, Reclaiming the Faravahar, #54976, ch. 5]. Yet the same community’s memory runs the other way. Zoroastrian historical consciousness “articulated both cultural and genealogical links between the Shi’a and the Arabs … blaming, the contemporary Shi’a”, so that Zoroastrian social imaginaries “embodied a line of religiously-informed resistance towards the ruling Shi’a” [Fozi, #54976, ch. 2]. He notes that gabr, “the Persian form of the Arabic Kafar or infidel”, became the standard derogatory name for Zoroastrians, and gabrak added a “humiliating suffix” [Fozi, #54976, ch. 1].

Keshe’s teaching. Mehran Keshe goes furthest. Answering a question in KSW 437 (16 June 2022), he says: “Zoroastrianism is the original religion it came through Mithraism … Jews learned from Zoroastrians and Mithraism and created the Jewish religion”, and “Islam is a copy of the same”. He claims that Muhammad never let the Arabs cross into Iran, that after his death they invaded “for the wealth of Iran”, and that by marrying the Iranian queen to their son Ali’s family mixed “the Iranian nation … with a religious … and Arab nation”. “That’s why Iranians are shear fanatic with Shia, because it’s coming to the blood, through monarchy.” He then joins the two cases: “Catholicism is the Roman mixture with the Christianity religion, to suit. The same as now I explained to you about the Iran and Shia … Everything in Catholic religion you read … it’s Mithraism” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 437, #378149, section “Find the true history”]. In KSW 425 (24 March 2022) he addresses “His Eminence Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran and … Vatican and … Jerusalem: The year of Mahdi is upon you”. He frames the “Promised One” in terms of Mitra, whom he calls “not a prophet” but “the love of the Creator” [Keshe, 425th KSW, #378603; KSW 437, #378149]. In KSW 633 (12 March 2026) he says the black flags of the Mahdi (“Methi”) have been raised in Iran and that Khamenei “established the army for coming of Methi”. He predicts that the clergy will be “the biggest deniers … because then they have no position”: with the Mahdi present, “Najaf, Karbala and Mecca don’t exist … Jerusalem has no value”. In the same session he asserts that “Ayatollahs” are of Lebanese and Iraqi origin while “Mullahs” are Iranian [Keshe, KSW 633, #378345].

Key points

• Husayn ibn Ali was killed at Karbala on 10 Muharram 61 / 10 October 680 with Abbas ibn Ali, the 13-year-old al-Qasim and most of his companions, by forces under Ibn Ziyad and Umar ibn Sa’d. This opened the Second Fitna [Wikipedia: Battle of Karbala; Sourdel, #12462].
• Armstrong reads Karbala as the Shii symbol of chronic injustice and of religion’s conflict with power [Armstrong, #53062].
• Al-Baqir’s doctrine of ilm passed by nass down Ali’s line, and al-Sadiq’s quietism and taqiyyah, separated the imams from Zaydi revolution [Armstrong, #53062].
• Keightley classes the Shia in four sects, agreed on Ali’s line but divided on proof and succession. He reports Ali al-Rida’s near-succession under al-Ma’mun and his rumoured poisoning, which Sourdel states as fact (Tus, 818) [Keightley, #64544; Sourdel, #12462].
• The occultation of the twelfth imam (878, per Boyce) made the Mahdi the condition of a perfect state, a theme Ghattas and Corsi trace into the politics of the Islamic Republic [Boyce, #55117; Ghattas, #72495; Corsi, #87960].
• Iranian or Zoroastrian content in Shi’ism is argued in four registers: a reported nationalist theory (Taheri), a historical mechanism (Boyce), informants’ claims set against a memory of grievance (Fozi), and a Mithraic reading (Keshe).